


Abide in Me (Love is not Enough)

by countesszero



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, HP: EWE, Het, Post - Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:51:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/countesszero/pseuds/countesszero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Petunia revisits her old childhood home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abide in Me (Love is not Enough)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rinsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=rinsbane).



> Many thanks go to Aigooism for betaing and to Fancypantsdylan for britpicking. I love you girls!

  
**It Seems So Long**   


One year after Vernon had died, Dudley visited to ask her again to sell the house.

She hadn’t seen him for a long time: his last visit had been shortly after Vernon’s funeral, but she had cut it short, feigning a headache, because she couldn’t bear to look at him.

He tended to avoid her these days too, as if he blamed her. Every few weeks he texted her on the new mobile phone he had given her as a Christmas present last year.

"To keep in contact," he had said. "So I can reach you."

Petunia thought that it was more likely an excuse to visit less.

When he did visit, he didn’t really look at her.

The thin, scraggly freak with his unwashed, long hair, wearing these torn jeans and that horrible t-shirt who had taken place in his skin, bore no resemblance with _her_ Dudley. Her Dudley had been destined to become a fine, young banker, a lawyer or a businessman. Someone with a _meaningful_ , successful life, an impressive, new car, maybe a Mercedes, a beautiful wife.

Even his toes, which she could see in his Birkenstock sandals were bony.

He had been their hope, their everything. Her Vernon had worked himself to death to finance his studies, first Smeltings, then the college. She had sacrificed her life and her dreams for him. And as if to spite or to punish her (punish her for what?) he had become a _social worker_. With renewed bitterness at that thought she pushed her tea away from her.

"The house isn’t worth anything. The whole area is going downhill, with all this ... scum moving there now. I’m not going to sell my house, so some Muslim or Arab can move in."

Dudley remained silent during her rant. He looked out of the window, and she could see his profile. He began to look like her father. There was no resemblance left with his own father.

"There has to be something done with it. We can’t just leave it."

He began to talk about the Council’s plan for the area. A new train line by the end of 2008 or the latest in the spring of 2009, he explained. They were cleaning up the river. Turning one of the mills into a museum about the history of cotton and whatnot. Two streets a bit further south, the Richmond Group had already bought up the rows of brick houses, torn them down to erect an apartment complex there.

Dudley shifted in his seat, a frown between his brows. He threw her a quick, calculating glance from beneath his fringe, and for a moment it made her heart ache, because that was the way her Dudley once used to look at her.

"You should sell the house to the Council," he mumbled into his tea. His fingernails were dirty. She could see black half moons of dirt stuck under them. "You haven’t been there for the last ten years."

"The Council can’t get me out of there," she said, but wasn’t really sure. Maybe they could?

She didn’t feel guilty for wanting him out of her house. As long as Vernon had been alive, she had held out hope but now … she didn’t even know how to talk to him anymore. Everything she said seemed to upset him, as if she was an embarrassment.

"You don’t even sublet it. It’s just sitting there, Ma," he said and fury boiled up in her, the way he called her "Ma". He did that on purpose. Did he think she was stupid?

Obviously he thought he could still manipulate her.

Vehemently she shook her head. "No, forget about that," she said, her voice shrill even in her own ears. "They’ll just build something where these … freaks can go, turn it into an asylum for your junkies and prostitutes."

"Shut up!" Dudley barked at her, and she flinched, spilling her tea. Vernon would have never allowed Dudley, or anyone to speak to her like this. "Stop … talking. You have no idea."

"No idea? You have the nerve to tell me I don’t know anything about freaks? I know who you're hanging out with."

Dudley closed his eyes and thinned his lips. He shook his head.

After a long silence he took a deep breath.

"That house stood empty for the last ten years," he said. "You’ll never live there again, you know? The Council plans to open a centre there to help children. They already bought Ms. Figgs’ house."

"Whose children? The children of this unemployed, alcoholic scum?"

"For once in your lifetime do something for others!" Dudley gritted out. She had only waited for that.

"So, _I_ am the selfish one!" Her voice rose. "I …" The word 'sacrifice' died on her lips. Suddenly she remembered all the other times she had said it, had reminded Vernon, her parents, all the others of her countless sacrifices. And now Dudley.

Why talk? She could see the same thinly veiled disgust in his eyes, the strangely pitying look that she had seen on Lily’s face.

Dudley stood, insisting on washing his tea cup, drying and putting it back onto the dish rack. He didn’t say anything about that house anymore, only in the end when he was almost out of the door, he said, "I can e-mail you pictures of the youth centre. I think it’ll look great."

He was right of course. She would never go back there. Not anymore. And she needed the extra money to fix this apartment. But most of all she just wished he’d leave her alone.

He interpreted her look correctly and said, "It’s supposed to be a centre that helps bullied children but we also hope to reach out to bullies themselves. To understand their own behaviour, where it comes from and how damaging it can be, not only for their victims but for themselves."

She blinked. Before she could react he nodded and walked down the stairs.

  
**It Grows Darker with the Day**   


She had never liked driving.

While Vernon had been alive, he had always been the one behind the steering wheel. She had gotten her driving license when she had turned nineteen, but then she had never really used it. Sometimes she had driven round the corner to the supermarket, or to pick Dudley up from kindergarten and from school.

One could get used to it though. Eventually one could get used to anything.

It was an uncharacteristically sunny, but not very warm early autumn day. Since it was the middle of the week, the traffic was flowing smoothly. She kept to the right on a steady 90km/h.

An hour later she arrived at Privet Drive.

From the outside the house didn’t look very different. Even the garden wasn’t in such a bad condition. Her roses were gone, but it was relatively tidy, and someone had raked the leaves from the lawn. Most of the street was deserted. From the plans Dudley had sent her, she knew that three houses were to be torn down in the spring before they would start building that centre.

Now she was here, she couldn’t really remember why she had wanted to come here in the first place. She felt nothing but a vague disgust. No sentimental memories. She had lived most of her life in this house and now it was nothing else to her than a pile of bricks, white paint, a lawn, a fence.

Petunia didn’t even get out of the car. She only stared at that house and the street, a little flummoxed by the fact that it really meant so ... little. Finally she adjusted her hair in the mirror, and somewhat at a loss she pulled out of the street. At the corner she glimpsed a board or sign that showed an artful concept sketch of the planned youth centre.

For a while she drove around in the area. She passed playing children and men in grey hoodies standing at a fence, smoking. One of them bent down and looked into the car and laughed. He stared into her shocked face then yelled something she couldn’t hear to his mates, and they all laughed.

She left the street and headed towards the motorway again. After a while she leant back. One could get used to this, she thought again. It wasn’t bad after all … driving.

Halton Moor was a three hour drive away from Surrey. She had only driven four maybe five times on the motorway before and she surely had never driven faster than 100km/h before, _ever_. Vernon had sometimes put the his foot down and sped up, going past 120 or 130km/h just to scare her and had laughed when she scolded him. Dudley had crowed in the backseat.

The house in Halton Moor Avenue where she and Lily had grown up was still there. It had been repainted as she could see, but the windows were still the same as well as the front door and the steps which led to it. A silver Toyota Lexus was parked in the driveway.

Petunia considered getting out and walking closer but then she saw the new owner, a woman in her forties open one of the windows and she had no desire to get involved in a conversation.

Again, she drove around rather aimlessly, through streets which were often still eerily familiar as if time had not passed at all. The only difference really were the cars. Then she passed Neville Road which made her think of the Midland Hotel where she and Vernon had stayed years ago when her father had died. On a whim she turned into Aberford Road and there it was, painted white like a lot of the houses in the area.

It would be nice not to have to drive back in the late afternoon, she told herself. And anyway back home there was nothing waiting for her, only an empty apartment, silent walls.

Feeling rather adventurous Petunia booked a room, the same one she had stayed before. She had never gone through the actual procedure of booking a room by herself before so she felt uncomfortably nervous. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself, but fortunately nobody except the blonde woman at the reception was there.

The woman showed her the room and Petunia quite liked the new, off-white leather sofa in the middle of the living room, the modern flat screen TV and the window opening into the courtyard. After she had refreshed herself she stepped out to buy face cream and a toothpaste at a drugstore. (She hated the tooth paste provided by hotels.)

The old school building didn’t exist any longer; it had been replaced by a bigger glass and concrete building. The Wyke Beck River looked cleaner, and there were biking pathways everywhere. The old bridge had been restored and was indeed very pretty now, Petunia thought.

The pub her parents had frequented when they had been living here, still existed albeit squeezed between a Tesco and a Burger King.

After driving around for twenty minutes, she found the road over the river and the old playground again. She was not so surprised to see that it looked quite different now. The hills around had been leveled and the playground concreted. The bushes she remembered were gone, replaced by benches. Strangely the swings were still there, but the old wood construction was gone. A red and yellow castle structure dominated the playground now, complete with little windows, corners, towers, ladders and a bridge. A rather big group of children were climbing around in it, squealing and shrieking. Two women were chatting in low voices on the park bench nearby while watching them.

Slowly Petunia walked to one of the swings and hesitantly touched one of them by the chains. She forced herself to remember the way Lily had been on the swing, swinging higher and higher, laughing so recklessly, showing off her magic already, because no one could swing that high up without magic. Lily had urged her to swing higher and higher, but Petunia had been afraid.

Even then, she had seen him, hiding between bushes, a glimpse of dirtied, black cloth, a black eye.

It was good that things had changed. The houses on the adjacent streets were different as well, not as pretty as the ones on Halton Moor Avenue, perhaps, but still a bit more modern.

She sat down on the swing for a while, watching the children play. All these years had gone by so fast. First she had adored Lily. Then Lily had begun to do _these_ things. Instead of scolding her the parents had been enthusiastic. And with eleven Lily (and Snape) had departed to Hogwarts and they had drifted apart. When Lily had returned in the winter holidays and the summers she always seemed to need time to get used to her old neighbourhood again. It had been a strange relationship but underneath their mutual hostility they still had remained sisters, somehow.

The summer before Lily decided to go out with Potter they had been almost close. They had gotten drunk together with Dad's Bowmore whiskey and Cointreau. Petunia had told Lily how much she hated to live at home. Lily had told her stories about Snape. How he was becoming weirder and weirder. Petunia hadn't understood half of it but the fact that Lily had needed and trusted her had flattered her greatly and she had felt that she was winning Lily back from Snape.

In 1978 Lily had graduated from Hogwarts and Petunia had expected the world to return to a normal pace. Lily would come back home and from now on Petunia would be the successful one. She had graduated with decent marks and was preparing for Uni. What was Lily supposed to do with her Hogwarts education? In _The Real World_ it was useless.

And then Lily had finally accepted Potter's marriage proposal and decided to return to the magical world. It was then that Petunia also realised that all the years she had been biding time. She had always waited for Lily to come back, had always expected it. But Lily didn't even seem to remember that she had once–eight years ago–promised her that one day she would return for good.

She had not congratulated her and Lily had not expected it.

Although Petunia had come to despise Lily, she still had been the first one to tell about her pregnancy. Some things were simply between sisters. Even such a thing as hatred could not change that. And although they had ceased to speak to each other after Lily had married Potter, she still had sent a letter when she had given birth to Harry.

Had she really hated Lily? She had hated Snape and the chain of events that unfolded after he had intruded into their life. No, the matter with Lily had never been that simple. Then again, in the end nothing was ever simple.

When two other families appeared (didn’t people have work to do?), pushing prams and the children arguing loudly, she got up and left the park.

On her search for a drugstore she drove by Spinner’s End, and out of sheer curiosity, she parked the car and got out to look at the house. It looked clean actually, a lot better than it had when she had been a child. They had never been invited to the house, but Lily and Petunia had once sneaked after Snape and had even seen a glimpse of his mother, a thin woman with burning eyes and the same black hair, cut in an uneven fringe. Before she had closed the door she had suddenly looked up and her black gaze had pierced across the street to where Lily and Petunia were hiding. She had snarled, yelled something at them and shrieking with panic they both had fled. Petunia had had nightmares of her for weeks.

She saw a movement, behind the curtains, and instinctively she backed away and got into her car, locked it and drove off.

She spent nearly forty minutes at the drugstore agonising wether to invest in an organic tooth paste or to stick with the Colgate one she usually bought (Dudley used to insist that fluoride caused cancer).

"I only wanted to go out today and buy a mascara," the woman in front of her told the guy at the checkout. She and her daughter had two full shopping trolleys and a mountain of items. She sighed dramatically, then the man chuckled.

Petunia looked at the three of them. The daughter giggled because she had mistakenly used the wrong side of the debit card and the man at the checkout huffed but continued smiling at her. Then the woman and her daughter left, laden with bags, and the man smiled at her as well, with the same welcoming smile. "Hello! How are you today?"

She averted her eyes, looked at the display and searched her wallet for change.

These days she spoke rarely. It was too difficult. It was hard to control her voice so she mostly nodded or shook her head. The man’s smile vanished.

When she stepped out from the store into the glaring autumn light, she ran right into him.

"Excuse me," Petunia murmured, clutching her handbag and her grocery bag.

She only saw a shabby charcoal coat, smelled dusty wool, then fingers dug into her arm.

"Let go of me," she said, panicking, but the man yanked her only harder and even before he spoke she _knew_.

"You," he said, and although she did not recognise that deep, growling voice, she very well recognised the bitterness and nastiness in it.

She looked up, and he only stood there, towering over her, black hair falling into his face.

"Snape," she said after a while. Strangely it didn’t come out in the disgusted tone she had meant to say his name.

Finally he looked at his hand on her arm, and as if he only became aware of his actions he pulled it back and rubbed the fingers on his coat.

Unsure what to do she decided to just walk on. There was nothing she had to say to this man. Yet she remained standing there, long moments after she had told herself to get going.

He stared at her. Did he not recognise her? It was hard to say. Then he bent down a little, as if to study her face, searching her eyes.

"Mrs. Dursley?" he spat the name into her face. "Petunia."

She felt her features distort into a grimace of disgust. The same dark eyes. And his face was still a study of contrasts: that limp, black hair and the white skin with its unhealthy yellowish tint, red thin lips like an angry gash.

He wasn’t the little faggot anymore, that nancy boy in his blouse and the absurd smock. He was old now. Albeit thin, hollow-cheeked, his jowls hung over his jaw line, and there were brown spots beside his left eye. The sharp lines on both sides of his mouth deepened when he sneered at her, the same way he had sneered at her so many years ago.

He looked even older than her although she once had heard that these people didn’t age at a normal rate. That old, creepy man, Dumbledore, with his unsettling eyes who had brought her sister’s child to them had claimed he was over a hundred years old, but to Petunia he had looked rather somewhere around sixty.

Then, forcing herself to move, she finally turned away from him, her head dizzy and spinning. Behind her she heard steps, then his hand was on her arm again, and this time she yelled at him: "Don’t touch me, you freak!"

"So it was you! I saw you before, lurking in front of my house!" Snape did not let go of her. "What are you doing here?"

"It’s none of your business," she hissed back. Then she walked away but he followed her again. "She was my sister!"

"You never cared for her," he said venomously, and she was reminded of the sullen boy he once had been. "You despised her. How dare you come here!"

"I lived here, too," she snapped.

She walked faster until she had reached her car. Hastily she rummaged for her keys, then slammed the door shut. Inside the car she realised she was nearly hyperventilating. The air seemed too thin to breathe.

Snape was still standing there, at the edge of the car park, a black silhouette, absorbing the sunlight in his coat, the same sour, arrogant look on his face, that same distasteful sneer as if she were nothing, as if she was only an insect, a disturbance.

No matter how much she had wanted to be seen, no one had ever seen her. Everyone had looked at Lily. Even she had always looked up to her, had longed to be like her, to be her.

Petunia took a deep breath and pushed the key into the ignition. Then she became aware of the tear drops falling down onto her hand and her handbag. Almost astonished she touched her cheek.

And with that a sudden cramp went through her, like an icy hand clutching at her chest, and she nearly doubled over. Sobbing she rummaged for a handkerchief.

Someone knocked on the window but she didn’t react. The door opened.

Snape.

"Leave me alone," she sobbed, "you horrible, horrible man."

"You feel only pity for yourself," Snape said coldly, but he pressed a tissue into her hand.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. "My son died a month ago."

Snape didn’t say anything then. There was nothing to say to this and she hoped he would go away now. He awkwardly bent down, until he was crouching on eye-level with her. His right hand was holding the car door.

She cleaned her nose and took a deep breath and forced her tears back. Foolish old woman, she scolded herself. What was she thinking? Break down in front of Snape? When she looked at him she didn’t see the contempt she had expected. Only his blank stare, the cold eyes.

This was too ridiculous. She only shook her head and dabbed her cheeks with the handkerchief, adjusted the mirror to check her face.

"Where do you live?" Snape asked.

"As if I’d tell you," she said, but her voice sounded only tired. Snape heard that too because he didn’t flinch or react in any way. He emanated an odd patience, the way uncles are patient with their nephews and nieces.

"Can you drive now?" he asked, and she stared at him in disbelief. There was no sympathy or warmth in that voice–Snape didn’t do sympathy, she remembered–but there was no trace of malice or mockery either. It was a question.

"Where do you live?" he asked again, enunciating impatiently, "Still in Privet Drive?"

"Dorking," she said. "Surrey."

"From Little Whinging to Dorking, Petunia," Snape said. "You really do have impeccable taste when it comes to picking addresses."

She stayed silent, not sure if his flat tone indicated he was joking. Surely he didn’t intend to joke with her as if they were old friends. It took her a moment to realise that he had called her Petunia: when they had been children he had never used her name.

"Are you going back today? Or are you staying at your parent’s house? Halton Moor Avenue?"

Petunia shook her head. "We sold the house after my father died. I am staying at a Hotel. The Midland in Aberford Road." While she was speaking she wondered why she was telling him. She glanced at him, distrustful. Perhaps he had bewitched her? Used some of his unnatural powers over her? She shivered in the warm September breeze.

"I can drive you there," he said and first she was so shocked at this suggestion that she didn’t even react.

"I should let _you_ of all people into my car?" His face remained a blank mask.

Then slowly she shook her head, gripped the door handle and brushing his wool coat, was ready to slam the door but her hand didn’t obey her.

Instead to her own utter surprise, she got out of the car, walked around the car and sat on the other side. If Snape was surprised or puzzled at her actions he didn’t show it. With an unnerving slithering motion he slid into the car, folded his long legs and arms into the narrow space, pushed the drivers seat back, adjusted the mirror, then turned the key in the ignition.

She shook her head again in disbelief and wonder at herself, staring ahead. They passed the red, sturdy looking brick houses and pretty green lawns of Neville Road, then turned into the broader New Market Lane. Snape waited patiently at a traffic light watching a mother with her two toddlers crossing the street.

"I didn’t know you … people like you … can drive," she said finally to say something, anything.

Snape didn’t reply to that. His driving was relatively smooth. He slowed down after the roundabout, but still missed the exit and cursed under his breath. Despite that delay they still made it relatively quickly on to the M1 where he sped up a little.

Petunia tried to remember when she had been a passenger in her own car for the last time. The last time had been when she and Dudley had that fight. He had driven her home, and she had picked a fight with him. Maybe it had been about the house again, or his hair, or the rags he had been wearing. She didn’t remember.

And after that she had waited for him to call and apologise and … that had never happened.

She felt so drained suddenly. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep this day away.

Petunia looked out of the window at the passing landscape.

"Do you live here?"

He paused, then shook his head.

She waited for him to specify, but he didn’t say anything else.

"Are you living in your parents house–Spinner’s End?"

"No," he replied. "I was just there to look at the house and decide what to do. I received an offer for the house. It’s generous, considering the area. The Richmond group is planning a logistics facility and an office building. I live in Arundel."

Petunia nearly gaped open-mouthed at him and contained herself only with some effort. "Arundel … what an … extravagant place to live …" she only said loftily. "I have been to Arundel before. The castle."

Snape gave her a quick glance, then concentrated on the road again. He had both hands on the steering wheel and held a slightly rigid posture. From time to time he glanced into the mirror. The rest of the drive she spent looking at her gloved hands on her lap. When they turned into Aberford Road he asked her where to stop and she just motioned to the hotel. He parked her car in the car park, then remained seated for a while.

"I am very sorry for your loss," he said tersely.

Petunia nodded several times staring at her gloves. She hadn’t cried all that much after Dudley’s death. But since her outburst before she found herself constantly on the verge of tears as if the sight of Snape had unsettled a fragile balance within her.

"I don’t need your pity." she said unnecessarily.

Yet she too remained seated.

After a while Snape asked, "May I ask … ?

"A traffic accident," she said quickly. "He was on his bike and got hit by a lorry."

Her chest was so heavy she needed to sigh, and like a stage actress she put her hand on her chest. From the corner of her eyes she could see how Snape slowly turned his head towards her. His white face loomed like the full moon in the semi-darkness of the car. Somehow the absurdity of this thought made it easier for her to speak.

"After we left Little Whinging, he was lonely. His old friends were all from there and he didn’t know anyone in Dorking. The other kids in the new school weren’t very nice to him," she sniffed. "So he got silent and he began to talk about …" her hand made an involuntary jerky movement, "… about Harry."

While she was talking she wondered what made Snape listen so patiently. Why he was so still, sitting beside her in her car, as if he were a friend. Despite her silent wondering she continued to speak, as if something forced her. She realised that she couldn’t stop herself now even if she wanted to. The words just spilled out of her.

"He said all sorts of crazy things. About how he was being punished because of Harry. I told him that was nonsense. We were always so good to Harry. We took him in, fed him, dressed him, cared for him. But Dudley talked himself into this crazy idea. And he said I was a bad mother. He began hating me, although I never ever did anything but love him. I loved him, I sacrificed everything for him, and he despised me. He was my only child and he–"

She took a deep breath again, willing the tight feeling in her chest away, even drumming her fist lightly against it.

"I always wanted the best for him. But he stopped talking to me. Instead he was always on his bike now, riding for hours. When he was at home he locked himself into his room. I don’t know what he did. He didn’t even play with his PlayStation thing anymore. Once Piers, his best friend called, and it turned out they hadn’t spoken for the last eight months. He had sent emails and texts, and Dudley had just stopped responding."

Drowning in the flood of memories that overcame her, she started crying again. Snape, fortunately sat unmoving, rigidly, just looking. He did not make a sound, but after a while handed her another tissue which she took.

"You have a good supply of tissues," she said foolishly, and when she heard him snort, something in her became a little lighter.

"I shouldn’t have let him move out," she said. "The traffic in London is too dangerous. I always told him that, but he kept riding his bike."

She blew her noise louder than she intended and couldn’t suppress a small crazed laugh. She had never told anyone of this.

Petunia lifted her head, momentarily stunned by that realisation and looked into her own wide, reddened eyes in the mirror.

"I didn’t mean to tell him," she thought. "He made me."

"I am staying not so far from here," he said after a while, waiting politely until she had adjusted her hair and dried her cheeks. "You can give me a call if you like."

He rummaged around in his pockets and pulled a dog-eared business card of a hotel out which he nearly thrust into her lap. "I am staying there," he said.

"I don’t think that is a good idea," she murmured but inexplicably regretted saying this.

Snape pulled the keys out and handed them to her, then opened the car door and got out. Before he closed the door though he bent down to her again.

"The Hogwarts letters to the Potter child were addressed to the cupboard under the stairs," he said. He was so close to her, his warm breath tickled her ear, the skin behind her neck. His whisper was nearly obscene. "Does this lie within your definition of a good person?"

She couldn’t believe her ears. How dared he …?

"Our house was small! We had to make do with what we had. We were not rich," she said sharply. "We never received any thanks for taking him in."

He muttered something under his breath she didn’t understand and shut the door. She had no idea why she did what she did next but she had already done so many things today that this didn’t matter anymore. She scrambled to get out of the car and yelled after him, "We were treated like servants by this old man, as if we were obliged to take him in. I had a one-year-old baby who was crying constantly, day and night, and these people just showed up in our house and told me what to do. Do you think raising two children is easy? When Lily was alive I was never good enough. Not good enough for that freak school, not good enough because I’m not a freak, not good enough to talk to … and then suddenly I was good enough to take care of her child. Nobody wanted to take care of him! Did any of … you volunteer? Or anyone else?"

She was aware that her face was twisted into a hateful grimace, and she loathed the shrill sound of her voice, loathed herself. She had wanted to deliver her speech the way Lily would have done: with calm dignity, a gentle but firm voice, the slight smile of someone who knew she was right.

Abruptly she turned on her heels and walked into the hotel. This time Snape didn’t follow her.

For the rest of the day she stayed inside. In the early evening she called the reception and extended her stay for another two days. For the third time she asked herself if that greasy, unwashed man had bewitched her. She had seen Lily do things without that wooden stick, sometimes moving things in her sleep.

In the late afternoon she decided to have a drink and forego dinner. It was an adventurous thing to do, but Petunia was in a strange mood.

The selection in the mini-bar in her room wasn’t overwhelming, small bottles of Black Jack whiskey, vodka, some cashew nets and a mars bar. She found a small plastic bottle of gin and a can of tonic water. While she was pouring herself a drink, she absentmindedly began to watch the News.

Prince William and his girlfriend Kate were off to Ibiza. To her chagrin the commentator didn’t go into details about Kate’s outfit.

In Australia Steve Irwin had been killed by a stingray. She stirred the gin tonic with her finger and sipped.

France had defeated Italy in a football match. She flicked away from that channel. Vernon and Dudley had always watched football.

In Austria an eighteen-year-old girl had escaped from a cellar she had been kept imprisoned in for the last eight years. Petunia had always wanted to go to Austria. As a child she had sung along to the _Sound of Music_ when it played during the Christmas holidays. She could not reconcile the image she had of pretty Austria with this kind of news. They had these incredibly blue skies, and snow covered mountains and picturesque cities. How could anything horrible happen in such places?

Fascinated against her will Petunia turned the sound louder. They showed the house the girl had been kept imprisoned, the upper rooms, which had belonged to the kidnapper, the garden, the back yard and then the cellar. The footage was from an Austrian TV station. Under the English commentary she could hear the original German voice in a monotonous murmur. According to the commentator who couldn’t stop using words like "incredible ordeal" and "horrendous", the girl had been abducted at age ten on her way to school by a man in a white van.

She thought that the cellar was rather spacious. It was in any case bigger than a cupboard.

A girl with blonde hair and blue eyes appeared on the screen. She was speaking in German, but parts of the interview were translated by the interviewer. Subtitles ran on the bottom of the screen: Girl in the Cellar, one subtitle read. Escaped on August 23rd 2006.

The commentator stated that this was the girl’s first appearance on TV, her first interview after her escape.

"He did not abuse me," she said. "He was kind, in his own ways."

Petunia sneered at the screen. She took the remote control into her hand to switch away, to another channel.

"I have been starving very often during the time of my captivity. I experienced the consequences of it: circulation problems, troubles concentrating. You are then only able to have the most primitive thoughts. You cannot focus on anything anymore. Every sound, every scratch is irritating and painful. Every thought is torture."

The girl looked into the camera, but after a moment closed her eyes. The interviewer explained that she was sensitive to light after being locked in the cellar.

Slowly Petunia let her hand sink again.

They hadn’t starved Harry. He had gone maybe one, but never more than two days without food. (The gin tasted bitter even with the tonic in it.)

It had been mostly Vernon’s fault. She had always felt that he had hated Harry like a man would hate a child that was not his. He had felt threatened by Harry. In the early days when Harry had screamed and cried so much he had accused her of taking him into her arms too often.

"What about _our_ son?"

On the TV screen the blonde girl’s face was a frozen mask. The camera stayed mercilessly on, zoomed into her features. "I believe he had a very bad conscience," she said, when asked about her kidnapper.

That was an odd thing to say, Petunia mused. She narrowed her eyes, looking at that milky complexion, the strange almond-shaped eyes. She didn’t really look as if she were suffering. She wasn’t crying. She was even smiling and laughing.

Surely then, it hadn’t been so bad.

"You little freak," Petunia said to the TV screen, pointing with the glass, then emptied it. "You’re making this up. You just want to be the centre of attention!"

"Every once in a while he even in some way suggested how I could escape and get away from him. As if he wanted that I get free some day. That it all falls apart. That somehow justice prevails, or something like that."

That it all falls apart.

Petunia wanted to laugh. A sharp pain made her gasp and she noticed she had clawed at her own thigh. Things fall apart all the time, only we don’t look at them until it’s too late. She liked the soft veil the drink had put between her and the world and got up to pour herself another one.

Sometimes when Harry had still been still little she had left the back door open when going out shopping with Dudley, _forgotten_ to lock the cupboard. She had imagined how she’d come home and that door to the cupboard would be open, revealing the empty bed. How silent and calm the house would be, how relieved she would feel.

But then every time they had come home he’d still be there, sitting on his bed, looking up at her with Lily’s eyes, large and accusing.

The interviewer went on and on. The German bits and pieces were barely audible between the translation bits of the BBC speaker, who slipped in her own comments. German. Quite an ugly language, Petunia thought. Maybe a country that would bring out Hitler and the Nazis would be capable of _that_.

Suddenly she slipped her stockinged feet out of her pumps and put them up, on the sofa. The gin and tonic tasted awful, but it relaxed her. She felt heat in her cheeks, warming her bones and her flesh.

She wouldn't have done that before. She never ever had put up her feet up on a chair. Lily would have done that. Lily would have had no regard for the cost of furniture, the need for white sofas to remain immaculately clean. In her world people just put up some spell and the whole house cleaned itself. Of course such people would not learn to act responsible. Why learn responsibility when everything can be done or undone. When there are no consequences for your actions?

(To these people not even death was consequential. They died, yet seemed to have nine lives like cats. Only her beloved ones–they stayed dead. Nobody brought them back.)

It was strange but it felt a bit exciting: Imagining to be Lily. When she still had been young, she had imagined it quite often. What would it be like to possess that wild, red hair and own this perfect porcelain beauty? She had often, too often imagined, how it would be to have someone looking at her the way Snape had looked at Lily. So full of aching need. As if he would suffocate if he’d look away. And yet, deep down he had always known that Lily was too good for him. There had been a resignation in him that hadn’t even registered with him on a conscious level. She had seen it, of course. After all, she had been used to living with Lily. She knew what it was like to not be good enough.

As a child she had searched Lily’s room to find a piece of magic (or any other evidence) that Lily used to put a spell over her parents so she could show it to them and lift it. A lily, with moving petals, opening and closing, like a little fanged mouth. A goldfish that had been a wooden pencil before. Maybe just a string of words scribbled with black ink on that thick, strange paper they used in that school.

Her mother had found her, hands in Lily's trunk, had slapped her hard on her hands, yelled at her.

Father had always encouraged Lily to show him her tricks, calling her "my little witch", always smiling at her in this wondrous way, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. (The day Lily had died, something in her parents had died, too.)

No matter how hard she had fought. There never had been a way for her to win against Lily. Helplessly she had watched Lily stealing her parents’ love away from her, piece for piece, day by day.

But _her_ love had never ceased. Her heart had never stopped aching.

The girl, whose name was apparently Natasha, spoke again. "I swore to myself that I would get older, stronger and more powerful so that one day I could free myself. I made a pact with my later self that I would free that little 12-year-old girl."

Natasha closed her eyes again, against the light in the studio and took a deep breath. The camera used this moment to zoom in on her, and tiny beads of perspiration were visible on the bridge of her nose.

When she opened her eyes again, they looked slightly reddened but filled with a strange, cold stare.

Petunia found herself studying that face, felt she was drawn into these watery, pale eyes. She was a child still, the cheeks soft, but her eyes were wary. She was not surprised that they reminded her of Harry.

 _(But we didn’t do anything wrong to Harry.)_

Harry had called her, and asked if he could come to the funeral. He had been unfailingly polite, had extended his condolences.

"I know you and I did not part under amiable circumstances," he had said. "but would you mind if I’d attended the funeral? I mean I–"

"Aren’t you happy he’s dead?" she had asked him before she could censor herself. Somehow she had never been able to do that around the boy. It was stupid and childish, but there was something about him that chafed against her. There was always that part inside her that bristled when she only heard his voice or saw him.

(Dudley had told her, shortly before he had died: "You hate him because you know what you did to him. What we did to him.")

There had been a long pause after this. She had wanted to hang up, when Harry spoke again.

"If you feel I shouldn’t come then I understand. I only–"

"Monday, 9am ," she had interrupted him. "The cemetery is on Reigate Road." Dudley would have wanted him there. Perhaps in his cold grave he would feel ultimately forgiven, finally redeemed.

Natasha’s eyes were glittering with mistrust despite her smile. Oddly enough she smiled a lot, as if everything had happened to another person. She got impatient at times, but then, she seemed to force herself to smile.

At some point Petunia understood that Natasha had not forgiven the world.

She had found it in herself to forgive her kidnapper, the man who had held her prisoner for so long, because she had come to know him during her imprisonment. Even monsters become human after eight years.

But what about the others, who had not looked for her? What about the parents who had lived only a few streets from her, in the same town _for eight years_? Could she forgive that after the initial panic about her kidnapping, the world had simply moved on without looking back, leaving her alone to fend for herself, locked in that cellar?

How big could a heart be to have that much forgiveness in it, to overcome the carelessness and indifference of the entire world?

And tomorrow or next week, when other news would surface, other children would be kidnapped somewhere in another corner of the world, the world would move on again, away from her, and then, how should she fend for herself?

With a start Petunia registered that she had emptied the little gin bottle. It wasn’t that much but … still. She felt hot and her breathing was shallow. When she got to her feet to open the window, she realised that she was swaying a little. The air smelled of the beginning of autumn, cool and slightly moist, of rain and humidity. She heard laughter and peered into the dark courtyard. There, at the stairs of the entrance, were four or five boys and girls, huddled together, all in hoodies and jeans. They were passing a suspicious looking, rather thick and short cigarette between them, and she knew immediately what it was. Oh, she was not hadn’t been born yesterday.

She didn’t scream at them which was decidedly odd, because that was what she usually did, if she would spot teenagers taking drugs. Now, she was simply rooted by the window, fascinated by these young people carelessly laughing and talking. Their faces were weakly illuminated, basked in a soft yellow glow by the light of the courtyard. Sometimes a passing car threw harsh, white stripes of light at them and then their shadows would rise against the brick wall only to flatten again and melt back into the darkness.

One of the boys raised his arms and moved in a circle. He was showing the other kids a dance or demonstrated a dance move or maybe just re-enacted something. Petunia couldn’t see it from the distance. The others shrieked with laughter. In one hand he held a beer can, in the other the joint, and then he turned around and turned like a ballet dancer, in a floating movement, and she watched and listened to her own heart beat. The world slowed down, only for her and him, and hushed silence filled her.

Petunia wasn’t sure if she had ever seen anything more beautiful.

For one moment she saw Dudley again–not the chubby, dear boy he had once been, but the thin, exhausted man he had become eventually, the man she had thought she could not love … only now he didn’t look tired or sad, but he seemed to be so happy. He didn’t hate her any longer, had maybe never hated her. He had not understood her love and had in the end rejected it, but maybe because she herself could not understand it, and because she herself had felt so guilty for her love.

As a mother her love had been fierce, and often more forceful than she had wanted it to be. It had gripped her the moment she had born him and had never left her, and it had been so deep, so aching she had never been able to see when this love would turn against her beloved ones.

She needed to ask Dudley for forgiveness, even though she wasn’t still sure where she had gone wrong. She had done her best, hadn’t she? She had brought him up, watched him grow, become proud, stubborn, greedy, then anxious, withdrawn and so sad. It was so laughably easy now to understand that she had loathed him in the end because his overwhelming guilt had reminded her of her own guilt.

In a manner of speaking she had killed Lily.

She had set out to kill her in cold blood the moment she had realised that she would never be able to make things float, fly or grow. She had carried that seed of hatred and grief so deep within her, she had poisoned her own child with it, had turned her home into a home of ashes.

She had not been able to stand the light. It was too hard to look into the sun light when one was standing in the shadow.

And yet, Dudley was here with her, wanting to tell her something.

"I can’t hear you!" she whispered. "I … can’t." She leaned forward to catch his words, but she couldn’t hear him.

The boy stopped abruptly in what he was doing and looked at her across the courtyard.

"Oy!" he cried in a voice that wasn’t Dudley’s at all. He stumbled, laughed stupidly and yelled something to her. The others joined in to with his laughter and Petunia stepped back and closed the window.

"Don’t cry," she hissed to herself. "You cried already once today. Once a day is enough, do you understand?"

She came to stand in front of the mirror where she studied her flushed face, smoothed her hair. Her glance fell upon the crumpled business card Snape had pressed into her hand before, lying innocently on the wooden dresser. (She did not remember putting it there.)

It seemed to whisper to her.

She was sure that this horrible, nasty man had bewitched the card. But then, if he had bewitched it … then it wasn’t her fault that she picked up the off-white hotel phone and dialed the number of the place he was staying.

"Discovery Inn Leeds, good evening, how can I help you?" asked a sleepy voice. Petunia’s eyes darted quickly to the LED display of the alarm. It was only past 8.30pm and she pursed her lips in disapproval.

"Room Number 23," she said. She squinted at the card, aware now that he had scrawled something on the back of it. "Mr. Thomas … McQueen, please."

She snorted to herself. The idea that Snape was _incognito_ was somehow absurd. But then, Severus Snape was not a very common name.

She listened to a grating midi-version of Greenpeace, then the music stopped abruptly and a gruff voice said, "That was earlier than I had thought."

"You put a spell on the card, didn’t you?" she accused him.

"So _you_ of all people would be compelled to call me?" Snape sounded annoyed, impatient. "You are of course fully aware how ridiculous this notion is, aren’t you? Not to mention, vain."

How deep his voice had become. Gravelly, like a barrel full of red, heavy wine, like the dark, cool earth. A voice that could pull magic out of thin air, make branches snap.

She gripped the receiver tighter, astonished that she wasn’t in the slightest afraid.

What was it she had wanted to tell him? Why had she called him in the first place? She searched for words, but Snape fortunately seemed to sense her hesitation because he said, "What is your room number?"

"Number Three," she told him.

"I’ll be there in a minute," he said and fell silent. Petunia said nothing. Too late she realised he waited for her to protest as she would have done under normal circumstances.

"Good," she said instead, even while a voice inside her asked: "What do you think you are doing?"

He hung up.

Petunia put down the receiver and looked again at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were still hot and red from the alcohol, but also from excitement. Her eyes sparkled and her lips were a little redder than usual. She turned away, angry with herself. Why should she care how she looked? She still went into the small bath room and rummaged in her old, beige toiletry bag for her lipstick and dabbed some on, then even went so far to apply mascara.

When she returned to her room she gasped in shock, as Severus Snape was sitting on the sofa with a bored, cold look on his face.

"You have never seen one of us Apparate?" he asked, taking in her reaction. There was a slight curl around his lips that betrayed how pleased he was with the effect his little trick had upon her.

"It slipped my mind," she snapped.

He gazed up at her with a strange smirk. In his fingers he held the empty gin bottle. "I never took you for a gin drinker, Petunia," he said in his carefully enunciated manner, his lips moving in this strange, theatrical way.

"That’s because I’m not," she said, sitting opposite from him.

"You seemed upset," he said.

Petunia lifted her shoulders. "Yes. I was." (Why his presence soothed her now, she could not comprehend.)

For a while they sat silently, he playing absentmindedly with the empty bottle, she staring at him.

"How did they die?" she asked.

Snape looked blankly at her. He did not betray any shock about her question.

"Lily and her husband," she clarified. "Potter."

"You don’t know." The way Snape said it didn’t bode well. It seemed as if he was too surprised to even care about intonation.

"Not much." Petunia admitted. "They were killed by terrorists. Dumbledore said, Dark Wizards. No one told me anything."

"You could have tried to find out. You just never cared enough," Snape said slowly, with a malicious undertone in his voice. Then after looking at her face, he obviously felt magnanimous as he added, "They were betrayed … by a friend."

She frowned. Harry had said something about that. A name came up from the depths of her memories. "Peter … Pettifer?" she tried, but it didn’t sound right. Snape only waved his hand.

"It was me. I betrayed them," he said, almost casually, then smiled a horrible, oily smile.

"What?" she whispered. He had loved Lily. He had adored her. He had loved her the same pathetic way a puppy loved its owner. He had growled and snapped at others, guarded her with jealous possessiveness, but a sharp word from her and he had whined and his black eyes had been filled with panic at the thought of angering her.

Snape laughed. Petunia shuddered at the sound. It sounded so hopeless.

"I never went to the funeral," she said and had to clear her voice, coughing.

Snape wasn’t surprised. "Why should you? They were buried in Godric's Hollow, a Wizarding village. You would have been confronted with magic which you loathe. And Lily? The dead don’t care."

"Have you been there?" Petunia squinted at him, wanting to see every change of expression that flitted over his features, and for a moment she thought she saw something behind his eyes.

He slowly shook his head.

At Dudley’s funeral the priest had chosen to recite a passage from the bible. The words had seemed like a mockery to her. Dudley had never been very religious, but he might have liked them. His new friends (social workers as well, she assumed, but she hadn’t known any of them) had obviously liked them, because some of them burst into tears. Dudley’s old friends from Little Whinging, Piers and his cronies, had looked uncomfortable.

"Do you remember Severus Snape?" Harry had asked after the funeral. "You and Lily met him when you were children …"

Before her features could distort in disgust he had said, "He is a good man. A hero. He didn’t like me, but he still cared for me because I was your sister’s son. He nearly gave his life for me."

"I don’t care for him."

"I know, but I want you to know that he wasn’t evil ... or so. He’s a good man." Harry’s voice had remained calm and polite, and she had hated him even more for that.

When she told Snape what Harry had said, he only sneered.

"Harry Potter only uses me to heighten his own fame," he spat. "The great Harry Potter forgives Severus Snape! What a great, generous man he is!"

His lips were a bitter line, his eyes though filled with a pain that belied his words.

"Lily sent me letters before she died," said Petunia. "A month before she died she sent me a letter every day, and I threw them all away. I never opened them."

She looked at her hands. "You loved her," she said. "At least you loved her. I should have loved her, but I never did. I was so busy with other things. And it was so hard for me to love her. Now I do … I think, and I wish I could tell her."

Snape shifted on the sofa, arranging his thin legs. He was wearing the same type of sturdy black boots Dudley had worn in winter.

"What did you do?" she asked, and she was astonished how calm and soft her voice suddenly sounded. An alien feeling went through her, and it was not the bitterness, not the anger she usually felt when thinking of Lily.

"What?" Snape blinked.

"Your betrayal? What was it?" Suddenly it wasn’t hard at all to look at him. Her gaze rested upon him, taking in the deep lines around his mouth, the thinned lips, the shadows under his eyes, the black, slightly widened eyes themselves. "Harry didn’t tell me very much. He told me you did something you came to regret later."

She took her time contemplating him and now he in turn averted his eyes.

"Potter misunderstands me, as usual," he said. He coughed, then cleared his voice, straightening himself up. "I met her on September 6th 1981. I had requested the meeting, and Dumbledore had assisted me and arranged it. I asked for her forgiveness."

He hesitated and she tilted her head. She felt that this was the first time he ever spoke about it.

"She asked me, if I would have felt any remorse if it wouldn’t have been her. If that prophecy would have been about someone else. At that time I didn’t know what to say. It had always been hard to lie to Lily. She read my answer in my eyes … yet she still chose to forgive me."

His voice sunk to a whisper. "She said, 'Be safe, my friend. When all of this is over and done with, we will meet again.’ I told her how sorry I was, not only for my allegiance to the Dark Lord, but for who I was … and she simply answered, 'Let us not dwell in the past. The future will always wait for us.’

"That was the last time I saw her alive."

When he looked up again, his gaze was defiant, a little wild, daring her to judge him. It was, she thought, the longest time they had ever spent together in a room, the longest conversation she ever had with him.

Maybe it’s a little obscene, a little tasteless to bond over your dead sister and the various ways you betrayed her, said a shrill voice in her, and startled she got up and went to the window.

Maybe.

Then perhaps.

She pressed her fingertips against the cold window pane. The kids from before were gone, but in that moment the doors of the pub opened and another gaggle of guests spilled out.

"Would you have changed sides if Harry hadn’t been Lily’s son?" she asked.

"Perhaps not," said Snape. "Then most of the things I did in my life were hardly my own choices."

Petunia snorted. "That’s not an excuse, Snape."

"I am not apologising," Snape replied in a matter-of-fact voice.

They were running out of things to confess. Or they weren’t. The weight of the last half an hour dissipated without her understanding how that could be. How could something that had been haunting her for so long, for a lifetime just … go away?

She had never understood how Lily had been able to laugh the way she had always laughed, so careless and free, without a single trace of malice. As a young girl she had suspected Lily was only gentle and sweet because she knew the power her beauty had over others.

But now she felt the same laughter bubbling up inside her, and for the first time in her life she thought she understood, what it meant to be brave.

Here they were, so many years after they had met on that playground, and a part of them were still the same children they had been, still hoping for something to happen, holding out.

"Lily wasn’t a good person either, not all the time," she said suddenly in a fierce tone. "She knew how to make Dad do everything she wanted. She often lied to Mum, so she could stay out longer. She knew that you were in love with her."

Snape moved, opened his mouth as if to say something, but she just talked over him.

"No, I mean, she _knew_. She knew exactly what you felt. She was not oblivious. She even told me several times that it would be better if she didn’t talk to you at all. It would be more merciful."

"And she’d always been in love with James. She talked a lot about him in the summer holidays. She always went on about his obnoxious behaviour, but even my parents once told her to stop pretending to herself. That was in her fourth year. Did you know that?"

Snape didn’t move, only gazed at a point behind her. His hands were balled to fists.

"She never meant any harm, but she was selfish too. She was not a saint." Petunia wished she sounded less jealous and petty. "She did not want to lose you. But in the end she did anyway."

She had not known her own heart after all. She had never looked at herself. After Vernon’s death she had not even been surprised that she didn’t feel anything. That had been the first truth she had let into her heart. It had been deceptively easy, and she had told nobody. Perhaps this had shattered something deep inside her, caused a tiny crack to reach the surface, widening before she could repair it.

Lie after lie had peeled away after that, like chips of old paint, and each time another truth surfaced it had become easier and easier.

And then in August Dudley had died.

And she had marvelled at her own ability to go through all of this again. The phone calls, the identifying of the body, the preparations of the funeral. People had expressed their admiration to her (with worry in their eyes) for her _strength_ , her _pragmatism_ , but it had been disturbingly easy.

Petunia turned around and moved towards the sofa, where Snape sat, sullen like a black woollen cloud, his perpetual gloomy expression frozen on his face.

She did not know why she did what she did, but far more important was, that she didn’t care. Sitting down beside him, she imagined again, a little, to be Lily, just borrowed her courage for a moment, long enough so she could take his large, thin hand into her hand. It felt not so strange after all.

"This might be a mistake," she said quietly, looking at his bony, strong fingers.

"Yes," he agreed but he did not pull his hand away.

"You … you still think of the past. And I am a widow who lost her son," she continued. He began tracing her hand with his thumb.

"Yes."

They looked at each other. Thankfully he moved first, bent towards her, raised the other hand and put it on her silk clad shoulder and pressed her gently against the sofa. Then his lips were on hers, dry, warm … and tense. His whole body was tense, as if in expectation of her refusal. She opened her mouth and let him in, and then he melted against her, shifted, so his body covered hers.

Briefly she thought that Vernon and she had never moved together like this, so familiar with each other's bodies. She felt so fearless and warm and excited all at once watching him slip off the coat and unbutton his white shirt underneath. His body was white and absurdly thin as she had expected it. He had a few black hairs around his dark flat nipples. Although he was thin, his stomach wobbled when he bent forward. He smelled of sweat and cheap shower gel.

Petunia kept a straight face as he clumsily opened her blouse, pinching her when a tiny button escaped his fingers. His arms were so long, so smooth, only a bit of hair on the underarms and of course thick patches of hair in the armpits. Self-consciously she sucked her stomach in, when he undressed her.

This is me, she thought. And I am about to sleep with Snape.

To stop herself from thinking she grabbed him and pulled him into a kiss and they nearly rolled off the sofa. When she slid off the leather it made a squeaking noise, but neither paid attention to it.

She unhooked her bra herself, then suppressed the urge to put her hands over her breasts. They had never been full, but now they were sagging too. He did not mind. Like a vulture he swooped down on them and took her nipple into his mouth. She squirmed when it became a bit too painful and he popped one black eye open and immediately withdrew his teeth, sucking at it more gently now and swirling his tongue.

Astonished she looked down on him. Greedily he pressed her down, into the sofa and began to play with her other nipple. The fact that he looked like a boy in a sweet shop, enthusiastic and eager, made her feel less self conscious. His erection poked her in the thigh and when he saw that she did not mind, (she in fact raised her leg a little to give him a bit more friction) he doubled his efforts and simultaneously ground himself on her thigh, emitting little grunts and moans.

Vernon had never sucked her nipples like this. He had never ferociously rubbed himself against her thigh, like Snape, and Petunia felt, for the first time in her life perhaps, _wanted_. Snape clumsily kneaded her left breast, grazed her wet nipple with his thumb, then almost hesitantly left them to stroke her flanks and move down. All the while he watched her face with slitted eyes for a sign of discomfort.

His hands were so large, Petunia thought.

He paused when he had reached her hip, looked at her as if for permission. With a little pang in her heart Petunia recognised a man who had probably had only a handful of sexual experiences in his life. She nodded her encouragement (something she never had to do with Vernon), and to aid him, lifted her hips and pushed her knickers down.

Snape stroke her between the legs. His cheeks were flushed now, an ugly blotchy colour, and a vein on his forehead pulsed. His gaze seemed riveted on her genitals, and she was nearly dying with embarrassment. The living room light was much too bright and she was lying naked on the sofa with Snape between her legs. He experimentally pushed a finger inside her and she clenched around him and let out a shaky breath. Satisfaction flooded her when she saw that his eyes were widening slightly. He clearly didn’t know what he was doing, was fumbling his way through like a school boy and yet she reacted to every single touch. Boldly she reached out and pressed his thumb onto her clitoris, then moved her hand to show him, how to rub it. Carefully, slowly in circles, with not too much pressure and in counterpoint to his finger moving inside her.

The wet heat between her legs was heavenly, so strong and pulling, and hot. She bit her lips, then circled and stroke her own nipples, still wet with his saliva. First she averted her gaze, but upon seeing how he gasped and how he moved faster, looking at his own fingers, moving in and out of her, making a faint squelching noise that told her how wet she was, she looked back at him. He didn’t seem to be able to decide whether to look at her fingers moving over her nipples or at his fingers.

Finally he slithered down, bent down and gave her a lick. She nearly jumped, as if she'd been zapped with electricity, felt his warm, tongue lapping at her. Encouraged by her reaction he lapped again, this time teasing her clitoris a bit with the tip of his tongue and she let out a needy sound. He licked around her vulva, then into the folds, tracing them, up and down, and finally stuck his tongue inside her.

She clawed at the leather, spreading her legs further and arched her back. "Yes!" she exhaled silently she hoped, but he must have heard it, because he hummed, then with much more confidence began licking her in earnest, stroking her thighs, pressing his thumb into her perineum while reaching up with the other hand and continuing to play with her nipple. Her jaw fell open in an undignified way. A hot, warm tide brought her closer and closer and she threw her head back.

He withdrew, then settled between her legs. Stroking his erect cock he looked at her. He was slender, curved, the colour dark, veined.

"I know spells so you won’t get pregnant. Or … sick," he said. His voice was thick with arousal and he had to swallow in between. She liked that he was so aroused. She had not expected this, and it made her feel young, innocent in a way. His lips were slightly open.

She only smiled a smile that she hoped was serene and reached out for his cock. He moved fast, stretching out on the sofa, putting one hand beside her hand, guiding it in with the other hand.

Snape murmured something in a foreign language, probably latin, paused, then murmured again. Something washed over her, and made her inhale sharply. So, that was how it felt. Magic.

He missed her entrance the first few times, but before she reached down to help him, he slid in, and both of them arched and hissed. She put a hand onto the small of his back and pressed him against her pelvis, then began to grind against him. He patiently stilled, his eyes squeezed shut.

When the heat began to move upwards, roll in waves over her, she could not hold back her little moans and gasps. He bent down to suck her nipples again, and she arched into his hot mouth, suddenly pushed so close, so close to the brink. She reached down, since the contact between him and her clitoris was lost now and rubbed herself. She had never ever done that in the presence of another man, but she felt oddly safe with Snape. And Snape didn’t mind. On the contrary: he peeked down at her moving hand, and seeing what she was doing his gaze flickered back to her face and he sped up a bit, moved more urgently. She could tell he was close and she again increased the pressure and the rhythm of her fingers.

Then suddenly white and red light exploded inside her. She clenched, spasmed around him and pushed closer to him, to have him inside completely and it felt so good, so perfect and he actually moaned loudly around her nipple, then moved rapidly in and out, frantically until he went rigid and thrust deep, deep inside her and stilled there, shaking and panting. A tremor went through his body.

They remained like that for quite a while. She stared at the ceiling, squinting a bit against the harsh light. Her breathing slowed down. She felt inexplicably happy and light headed, maybe even the slightest bit silly.

"I had sex on a sofa," she thought and could not suppress a smile.

A movement to her side brought her to attention that Snape was still awake. Vernon had usually fallen asleep right away.

Snape didn’t say anything, but she recognised the lanky boy he once had once been lurking in the depths of his large, dark eyes.

"Do you have to go?" she asked. He searched her face for something, his gaze swept from her eyes to her lips and back (as if he was looking for insincerity) then he slowly shook his head. Petunia could have sworn that he was a tiny bit sheepish, but then his face was closed again so she couldn’t really tell. When she moved to get up (the leather squeaked again) he also rose, handing her the crumpled skirt, and her blouse. She simply pulled her knickers on, took the pile of clothes and led him by his hand into the bedroom.

She lay down beside him, and he put an arm around her shoulders. The lack of awkwardness _between_ them baffled her. Maybe she was still drunk. Suddenly he looked at her and asked, "Would you rather prefer I leave? As you know it’s no trouble for me."

She shook her head. "I’d like it if you could stay the night."

Something inside his eyes quieted and his features relaxed. She thought he must have fallen asleep but then he spoke again, "Are you still afraid of magic?"

She thought about it. "Yes," she admitted honestly. "I don’t know. It’s not so nice when you can’t do magic, but you live with someone who can."

After a long pause he said, "My father used to say the same thing."

Petunia did not know when they fell asleep eventually, but when she awoke in the morning he was lying on his stomach, his arm flung out over her breasts. Black hair was stuck onto his face. It was still dark in the bedroom but a ray of light managed to peek through a gap between the drawn curtains. Snape looked at her heavy lidded, still sleepy. She moved closer to him, and he squeezed her shoulder. Something occurred to her.

"That day in the park when the branch broke off and nearly killed me …" she said.

She heard him inhale.

"I need to know," she said. "Was that really you?"

He moved his head so he could look at her.

"No," he said. "If my magic would have been strong enough I’d have done it. As it was … I pretended. Lily thought I did it, and I wanted her to. As a little kid I had this fantasy of being dark and mysterious. I wanted her to think I was dangerous, able to perform dark magic … I hoped that would intrigue her and let her see me in a different light than just Severus, the neighbourhood boy."

She nodded in the semi-darkness. That she could understand.

"Do you think we can go and visit Lily’s grave?" she asked him.

"It’s going to be a long drive. And then we still have to use magic to be able to see her grave." Snape mumbled, his eyes closed. He burrowed closer to her, stuck his nose into her hair and began snoring softly.

"It’s alright … I’m not afraid," she said and smiled when she realised it was true.

The End

 _Abide in me as I abide in you.  
Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.  
(Jn. 15:4)._


End file.
